Another day and more ridiculous lines for government spinners to push:

TOP MESSAGES FOR THE DAY

1. The South West has provided the perfect start for the Torch Relay. Hundreds of thousands of people have lined the streets to welcome the flame, creating remarkable scenes and providing a great advert for the region, the country and the Games.

2. The Torch will briefly enter the West Midlands for the first time today, before arriving in Wales on Friday. Both parts of the UK are making a huge contribution to the Games, and will add their own distinctive magic to the Torch Relay.

For a couple of years Guido used to report his financial market trading in a box in the blog’s right hand column. It was popular with a few readers, nowadays Guido trades occasionally and just tweets about it. Readers still ask how the market trading is going, the above chart shows how it has been going this year so far, each data point is a closed trade. For the first couple of months Guido was long and wrong on gold, which hurts when you are over-leveraged. Since March Guido has been trying to sell a break in the Euro, as the chart shows it wasn’t really going anywhere until a couple of weeks ago when it dipped below 1.30 to the US dollar before hitting new lows for the year yesterday. Making back all losses for the year and some…

The CityAm Active Trader conference saw 650 traders gathered in the City. Guido spoke to them about the pros and cons of trading on the back of your political analysis. If you are interested in that kind of thing (and why the tooth fairy made 7 year-old Miss Fawkes cry) the speaking notes are here. Just don’t tell Mrs Fawkes…

Painful watching for team Hunt this morning as News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel took a battering from Mr Jay QC at the Leveson Inquiry. He’s coughed that the impression he was given was that Adam Smith was talking on behalf of Hunt and thus feedback was given to News Corp from the Secretary of State, via Hunt’s SpAd’s personal email address.

He also confirmed he was in text contact with Hunt – painful extracts were read out in court and the whole batch are due to be published today. It seems former Hunt SpAd Adam Smith will try to paint Michel as a fantasist, but the paper trail is not looking good…

UPDATE:

Michel to Hunt: "You were great at commons today". Hunt reply: "Merci, large drink tonight" #Leveson

“PRIME Minister David Cameron yesterday denied he was too chilled out” wrote Tom Newton Dunn on Monday. It would seem the Sun’s Political Editor is a bit of an expert on chill-axing, at least if his personal portrait is anything to go by:

Carina Trimingham has lost her case against the Mail and Mail on Sunday. A judge has ruled that acccurately describing Huhne’s then mistress as bi-sexual is not a misuse of private information. As you were…

UPDATE:Sky are reporting that Trimingham has to pay a quarter of a million in costs within fourteen days. Ouch…

The Telegraph is reporting this morning that any vote on gay marriage will be a free vote – something Guido told you months ago. Tory Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin told a meeting in Parliament back in March that the vote would have to be free, and he would know. Owen Paterson’s intervention against the idea seems to have forced Cameron’s hand further and will do the Northern Ireland Secretary’s growing reputation on the right no harm…